


GQ: Knowledge is Power

by John the Alligator (Chyronic)



Series: The Superhero AU [5]
Category: Magic: The Gathering
Genre: Actual SJW Tezzeret, Alternate Universe - Human, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Superheroes/Superpowers, F/M, in-universe journalism, interviewing someone nigh-omniscient: the struggle is real
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-02-25
Updated: 2016-02-25
Packaged: 2018-05-23 04:11:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,875
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6104503
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chyronic/pseuds/John%20the%20Alligator
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>One of Sharuum's conditions for collaborating with Tezzeret was that he go public with his work. He begrudgingly agrees. But just because the reporter who got the interview is just doing their job doesn't mean he's going to play <i>nice</i>.</p><p>--</p><p>  <i>Sharuum rests her hand on his; his fingers coil around it like snakes. Neither of them breaks eye contact with me.</i></p><p>  <i>I take a moment away from my own distress to pity the person who has to edit whatever I manage to make of this when I’m done.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	GQ: Knowledge is Power

**Author's Note:**

> Author’s note: the interviewer is, in fact, deliberately real-life-equivalent-of-canon-typical racist/ableist/misogynistic. That background radiation is on purpose. They’re a youngish person in journalism who’s done multiple unpaid internships to get a reasonably prestigious position. It happens. At multiple points I had to go back and make the adjective choices for Tezzeret more gross, and hopefully succeeded.

> [Image: No warmth, here: everything is gray surfaces and white sunlight, even the jewel tones that draw your eyes to the two figures gone cold. Tezzeret, a Black man somewhere around thirty with long dreadlocked hair quickly going white, sits, leaning forward with his elbows braced on his thighs, entire right arm visible. Sharuum, a middle-aged Indian woman with braided black and white hair dressed in too many layers for the eye to follow, stands in 3/4 view, one hand resting on his exposed right shoulder; the obvious visual implication is that of a power behind the throne, but she’s not really behind him, and her legs—flexing feline toes and all—remain fully visible, layered dress cut high enough to show the inhuman C-shape her legs follow below the knee. The impressions are force, intellectual and physical, and the raw alien elegance of their self-made limbs.]

Sharuum and Tezzeret’s nascent partnership is a study in contrasts. She’s one of the best-known superhumans in the world and has been living in the public eye for decades; Hegemon Industries needs no introduction. Her newest partner, the cryptic (and equally surname-less) medical engineer known as Tezzeret, seems to have no history whatsoever.

(Not very far in and I’m already writing the article in my head, because that’s how it works.)

How did he get here?

“There’s not much glory in medical technology unless you seek it out,” he says. I’m unsurprised to find that the closest he comes to an identifiable accent is the sharpness with which he speaks. “I’ve been working in the area for a while, but going through the last decade of advances in prosthetics and noting every one I’ve had my hand in seems a pointless exercise in ego, don’t you think?”

Sometimes while he speaks—though notably not while anyone else does—the three fingers of his right hand drum gently on the table in front of us. Even that familiar motion is rendered unnatural, his fingers moving in inhuman, sinuous curves. If he’s worked in the field that’s bringing more and more human-like limbs to amputees, why choose this?

“I designed my own arm and redesign it regularly,” he says, voice soft as if to offset how physically imposing he is. “Within existing physical and technological constraints, it is exactly what I want it to be.”

Unlike most people with a prosthetic hand, who favor the remaining real one, Tezzeret was and is right-handed, he says. His levels of speed, strength, and dexterity have been better than the original since his first prototype, but it took time for the physical form to take shape.

“I knew what I wanted, even then. But it took work to make it real and it took some determination as well. It’s easy to want what’s normal, and I don’t fault people for it. The human hand is a triumph of evolution—but it’s inefficient, easy to damage, and the product of thousands of years of inexact one-size-fits-all selection. Look.” I hadn’t appreciated the difference in scale between his hands; the right has barely anything resembling a palm, but its three fingers are each longer than his entire natural hand. “Greater range of motion than a double-jointed person could dream of. I’m a draftsman; have you noticed what having to put your fourth finger does when you write? And the level of sensitivity at this point is a night and day difference.”

But what made amputating his arm worth it to begin with?

“It could’ve been better.”

Then why not replace everything?

I mean it as a joke. He doesn’t take it as one. “The world isn’t ready,” he says immediately. “A compact enough energy source to power an entire body is still a challenge, and there are still things that just need skin to work. Not having fingerprints doesn’t go over too well. And,” he adds, finally—to my surprise—showing a marginal smile, “just between you, me, and your entire readership, capacitive touchscreens are still proving a challenge.”

Capacitive touchscreens?

“I can’t use a smartphone,” he says. “It’s off-brand of me, I know.”

For Sharuum, her legs are a matter of public record. Like her partner, Sharuum abandoned the human body as a design reference years ago; being in the public eye for longer than Tezzeret’s been alive means over three decades of photos showing her with arcs of metal from the knees down. She’s looking more biological than previously, but no more human: Sharuum’s new legs of those are a great mechanical cat made bipedal, and this is her first public appearance since the surgery.

“I have toes!” she says brightly. “I’m enchanted; I don’t think the novelty will wear off for a while.” She gestures to demonstrate.

The look is similar to that of Tezzeret’s arm. Their companies are just starting to collaborate, and their future is uncertain, but Sharuum wears their first work together with obvious pride.

“I’ve wanted to work with someone making advancements in sensory and nervous integration for a long time, and I happened to get lucky,” she says, when I ask how they found each other.

“And I’m only in the industry at all because of her,” Tezzeret adds.

How did they meet?

They glance at each other. “Coincidence,” Sharuum says. “I was surprised we’d never encountered each other before, until I actually met him.”

The banter solidifying the world at large’s current guess, I ask if they’re together—and Sharuum’s entire aspect changes.

“Young man,” she says, “that is a disrespectful line of inquiry for multiple reasons. Tezzeret has more information than me to share, and I am taking a step back at this time because I want him to do so—but to ask him about his tech and me about supposed relationships? Let alone the fact that gossip like that is hardly relevant to the work you’re here to do.”

“In addition,” Tezzeret says, sitting up straighter, “she’s a widow, and I’m married.”

I make my apologies. Sharuum gives me half a smile. It’s impossible to determine how intimidating she would be by appearance and personality alone, and how much comes from my awareness of her power—but she always seems to know what I’m thinking, and I don’t particularly want to work with her again. I may as well turn that into a question, though: why not keep an advantage like she has secret?

“We are obviously very different people,” Sharuum says. “I have at least four distinct answers to that question. My power has been common knowledge since my early teens, because that’s how long I’ve been widely visible. As a fourteen-year-old girl, even with the distinct advantage you’ve pointed out, I could hardly account for what the rest of my life would look like. And contrary to what you may think, in terms of what information is available to me, the difference between conversation with someone who knows what I am and someone who doesn’t is negligible. People reveal themselves by bracing themselves; there is no technical advantage in shielding. At the same time, especially that young, I knew there had to be others like me somewhere and felt an obligation to the rest of society to even the playing field in any way I could, even if it was superficial. As I’ve aged, I’ve also felt a duty to use this to send a message, to children and young adults in equivalent situations. Especially after issues with telepaths and how those events worsened existing negative media and legislative trends, young people with powers, powers in the cognitive sector _specifically_ , need the message that they have options other than to hide or to commit atrocities; that they don’t have to give up who and what they are to be human. That they _are_ human, no matter why or how much the world tries to convince them otherwise.”

But would people deciding on their own to limit their powers when they realize they’re creating dangerous inequalities really be that bad?

Tezzeret glances at Sharuum before answering; she gives an almost-imperceptible nod. “You’re funny,” he says, with discernible emotion—anger, scorn—for the first time. “Do you ask every rich person to whom you speak why they don’t do the world a favor and stop wielding power? No, more than that, since her talents are inborn: every white person, every straight, abled, cis person? Or does interpersonal inequality only keep you up at night when it can just as well be in the hands of the marginalized, because the superiority in question is neither a constructed lie nor handed down by society? _Fuck!_ I’m rich, she’s rich, and you ask her why—why she doesn’t lobotomize herself instead of working to her full potential, because that’s the only way you can imagine her _existence_ being neither unfair nor dishonest?” He’s breathing noticeably, now, hard but even, and for the entirety of that rant had been entirely still.

Sharuum rests her hand on his; his fingers coil around it like snakes. Neither of them breaks eye contact with me.

I take a moment away from my own distress to pity the person who has to edit whatever I manage to make of this when I’m done.

The two of them obviously keep up with one another, I offer. Since he’d mentioned admiring her, before: what are his powers?

When he speaks this time his voice is shockingly hard and cold, and just as angry. “The barriers you place on your conception of empathy are disgusting,” he spits. “I’m a human being. I put in the work to remain such.”

Is he implying Sharuum isn’t human?

“No, but he might be implying you aren’t,” Sharuum cuts in dryly.

I’m definitely not putting this in the final draft.

Tezzeret gives her a sharp nod. “To not behave in an inhuman manner is a series of continual choices. Sharuum makes them just as I do.” He glances at her sidelong. “Better than I do, on average.”

I’d think that was a compliment, but Sharuum looks displeased. The silence stretches on while I grope for a neutral topic that might deliver usable content again.

Sharuum’s legs up until this time were modified versions of the Cheetah blades used by amputee runners. The originals couldn’t be used for daily wear, because the recoil they depended on made stillness impossible. Hers, between altered construction and integrated tools, successfully sacrificed speed for variety of mobility: she could jump, glide, stand, and walk, while still pulling off a formidable run. To what degree were the new ones inspired by her previous designs? And why so feline?

At this, she smiles. I find myself wondering if she’s decided to reassure me. “The feline quality isn’t actually a joke. I’ve been fascinated by the problem of making quadrupeds that tiptoe—think horses or dogs, as well as cats—into bipeds, wondering if the change in functionality was worth the effort. Anyway, my body’s been shaped like this for most of my life. The skeleton of this design is still my old blades,” she says, turning and bringing her leg up next to the table to demonstrate. “Little has been altered there. What’s new is the knee replacements and actual feet.”

Knee replacements?

“I still had some tissue left below the knee, but my range of motion was limited and attaching my legs there would eventually become painful. The design we finally settled on required further amputation going up to the thigh, so the new nerves had somewhere to attach to. My knees now are part of my legs and can be upgraded as needed.”

That sounds violent. Was it worth it?

“Definitely,” she says, almost before I’m done speaking. “Taking off enough tissue to get to undamaged nerves so sensory integration is successful was unavoidable. I knew what I was agreeing to, and it’s been more than worth it. Reduction in pain aside, the rotation increase with these knees is at least double. I hadn’t realized how much I was missing by trying to save as much of the remaining limbs regardless of damage, until we fixed it.”

“It’s still well within human range,” Tezzeret adds, back to the clear near-monotone. (He isn’t _actually_ speaking in monotone, but the words sound normal, until I play them back in my head and can’t find human inflection.) “I’m working on improving that.”

I consider bringing up his emphasis on the superiority of his prosthetics over real human bodies, and decide not to risk it. You’ve mentioned redesigning your arm before. Aren’t the multiple surgeries a problem?

“I’ve never needed another surgery to replace my arm,” he says, with a hint of pride. “I did choose to graft more support to the bones of my torso to help with the weight. But part of the reason getting the initial amputation right is so important is that you won’t get another chance at convincing the body the artificial nerves are real, which is also why my ability to test on other people has been so limited. After the first replacement, the stump ends in a permanent cap with a connector a new limb can use and is, basically, plug and play. If you will.”

That was a joke. I’m _sure_ that was a joke. Even more so when Sharuum adds, “So detaching and reattaching are trivial. Were it not indecent I would demonstrate for you at this time.”

And will the rest of the world ever benefit from their advancements?

“ _Definitely_ ,” Sharuum says, with feeling.

Tezzeret’s addition is more reserved: “It’s going to take a lot of work. The procedure is hard to get right, you still only get one shot at it, and the severity of potential damage is astronomical. I’d try soliciting volunteers and doing it for free, but that’s not currently how the system works. I can’t exactly go to—I suppose it would still be the FDA—and ask to jump to human trials with a long, expensive procedure, which only I know how to do, bearing a grand total of two unauthorized but successful human subjects, and yet the feedback needed to determine success is impossible to acquire from an animal.”

“Tezzeret did a significant amount of my surgery himself,” Sharuum adds.

When the thoughts flitting through my head are _How much of that was rehearsed, the prompt for volunteers to contact him **must** be deliberate_ and _my editors are gonna **die**_ and _If he had to do her surgery, who did his? How long ago? And how is the man with no paper trail a doctor?_ , I have to wonder if she’s taking pity on me by moving the conversation somewhere smaller.

That’s impressive, I say instead, and ask more about her legs.

“Given the C-shape I was committed to, cat feet or something hooflike were the obvious contenders; a humanoid foot would be too long and too thin to work. I wanted something that could handle rough terrain and mold to the landscape, since I don’t wear shoes, so cat feet it was. The sensitivity of my legs themselves—see how they’re mostly metal?—is mostly just pressure; nothing particularly interesting happens to your shins, you know? And all the motor control is in your feet and knees anyway. So what really is worth keeping is pressure, ability to contort to a surface, and how much you can roll with your ankles.” The individual toes are made of the same white silicon as Tezzeret’s arm, the underlying structure faintly visible. The pads are a metallic surface which flexes gently.

Does she have claws?

She gives a small, short laugh. “No comment.”

I turn to Tezzeret and wonder if evening the scale on personal questions will get me in both of their good graces. Or at least shunt me out of actual hatred on his part. I try to remind myself that he’s human, and unlike Sharuum, not used to this kind of thing. If I’m reaching for compassion I stop feeling fear, and that’s just better writing.

I didn’t know you’re married, I say. Up until recently, no one knew who you were or what you did, period.

“There’s a lot in that question,” he says. “Which to address first? I am married, have been for quite some time. My spouse arguably introduced us.” He gestures to Sharuum.

 _What happened to coincidence,_ I think, and, considering word choice, _So who’s the husband and how does **he** know her?_ So, you’re bisexual, or…? I consider turning to Sharuum, but my meaning is probably clear.

Tezzeret’s eyebrows go up and stay up. “I am, yes,” he says, and I don’t care to clarify who I was talking to when Sharuum’s studied neutrality and Tezzeret’s quiet edginess make it clear that they both know what I was asking about. “Though given that my relationship with my _wife_ is approximately closed, it’s not often relevant.”

Approximately? (Huh. Wife.)

“Approximately.” He’s resting his face in a smile, a thin one, showing teeth.

After years of operating in the shadows it seems odd to come out that casually, I say. Even for normal people doing so is usually more deliberate.

“Why? You obviously found it worth speculating on, and I have few secrets, none of which include my sexuality.”

That’s an odd thing to say when you’ve kept so much of your existence secret until now.

“But I haven’t,” he says. “Subtlety isn’t secrecy. It’s not like I don’t register patents in my own name. I don’t dodge taxes, or run shell corporations. I suppose the mechanism of my arm is secret, but only until I can faithfully replicate it for others; before Sharuum, I was—by necessity, obviously—my only alpha tester. At any rate, I’ve seen too many unicorns—”

I resist the urge to laugh in the moment before I put together what he means. The term for Silicon Valley start-ups that rise unsustainably and burst?

“Yes. The startup bubble. The ‘venture capital has more money than old white libertarian men know what to do with’ bubble. The ‘the “there’s an app for that” bubble will never burst’ bubble. Unicorns, rising to billions in VC investment on the power of a good pitch and, here’s the problem, a single person’s cult of personality. Not selling a product. Selling an image. A lifestyle. Their archetype worked, maybe, when there were three big players and they kept their noses in consumer technology, but the second real generation was keyword _disruption_. So you get Uber, and you get AirBnB, and you get people dying, people being hurt, people _being killed_ , and no one knowing who was liable and how to prevent it. You get microjobs, union-busting on command at the speed of 4G LTE. And then these people actively go into health. Soylent: rapidly changing formula, rapidly changing manufacturing process, no recalls, limited accountability, cultlike public image—public, public, everything public, here’s our newest convert, here’s our CEO with a kitten, we’re humans like you only better, making mistakes too fast for the FDA to keep up and squandering a potentially vital product even as they prove that there is a very real need being underserved, being betrayed. And on the other side of the transparency spectrum there’s Theranos—”

I blink. The blood-testing company?

“Yes. Run like a tech startup. Angel investors. Ex-military investors. Huge level of obfuscation on how things worked, huge amount of _publicity_ focused entirely on their founder as a person. So here’s profile of her, a Stanford dropout, same old story we know and love, young conventionally attractive blonde white woman dressed like the second coming of Steve Jobs right at the point where noticing sexism in tech becomes fashionable no less, you ask her a question about _her work_ , the _actually_ important part of the equation, and it’s ‘a chemistry occurs.’ And you find out they’re hiding studies, hiding government sanctions that say they can’t be trusted to use their own technology. And I don’t think it’s for the money. You _want_ money, you become Turing Pharmaceuticals—”

The AIDS pill guy? I ask, trying not to let on that I’m struggling to keep up. This is good material, strong, distinctive, not what I expected, but it’s going to be a nightmare to make putting the background in the article itself look suave…

“The ‘AIDS pill guy’’s _company_. Isn’t it interesting how you know a single person for that? A face? White. Male. Not that old. We don’t like him, but there’s a hole we need to fill in this story. But: if you’re going into health for the money, it’s horrible, but the answer is squeeze the vulnerable. It’s easy. It’s anonymous unless you decide to be Martin Shrekli with it. It’s been going on for decades. You can’t get rich in tech without a figurehead. It’s not about the money. It’s about the cult of personality.”

He finally pauses for longer than a barely-noticeable breath. I can’t think of anything to ask, but I’m thinking, kind of hysterically, _Christ, man, no college will want you as a speaker but their student organizations are going to get down on their knees and beg._ (Sharuum is—smiling?)

“And insofar as I can control it, I can’t let that happen on my watch,” he goes on. Back to quiet, calm, fast and clipped; I’m wondering if I’m imagining that there’s still a deep well of emotion behind it, the thing I just caught a flash of in the form of that speech. I’m probably romanticizing it. People who can give speeches with only a prompt aren’t statistically special; I just didn’t expect a no-name engineer to be one. “I can’t let that happen to me, because this isn’t _about_ me. It’s about my work.”

So why come out of the shadows now?

“Because I’ve hit the limit of what I can do on a small scale like that. The problem with the proliferation of these cults of personality is that the world is changing to accommodate them.”

“Because one of my conditions for working with him was that he take credit where he deserves it,” Sharuum adds firmly. (I think Tezzeret might be blushing. I don’t want to anger Sharuum again and I don’t think asking in a subtle enough way to not set her off is _possible_ , but they are definitely fucking. I’ve seen newlyweds less obvious. Is this the supergenius equivalent of marriage, I wonder idly.)

And you chose—well, you chose a hell of a way to go public.

Tezzeret shrugs. Even that motion is a little off—jerky on one side, inhumanly fluid on the other, and uneven. “I see no reason to do anything halfway. Might as well go with a bang.”

So what’s next?

Both of them smile. Intimidating by dint of who’s wearing the expression—the force of nature who is the smartest woman in the world, probably in human history, and the mystery man who can _keep up with her_ —but they’re genuine, and, I think, maybe kind.

“Do you want to?” Tezzeret murmurs to her.

“Go ahead,” she says.

He turns back my way. This part’s rehearsed, I think: something they agreed on going in. “I suppose you’re going to have to wait and see.”

**Author's Note:**

> Other chapters: aftermath, and the two-page spread that results.


End file.
